More than 170 people attended the Datacenter Dynamics event in Miami yesterday. A good showing, I think, for an inaugural show-especially considering the impact the ongoing financial crisis has had on financial firms and business, both in the U.S. and worldwide.

Steve Worn, CTO and group director of Data Center Dynamics certainly seemed pleased, especially with the turnout from the Americas. He did take time to lament the Hugo Chavez of Venezuela hadn’t responded to requests to keynote, which may have held down attendance from that nation,

Early morning speaker Ben Stewart, senior vice president, Facilities Engineering of Terramark boosted everyone’s outlook when questions from the aforementioned Mr. Worn led him to comment on the outlook for the entire data center industry. “I’m not seeing any deals getting pulled back. If anything, they are getting ramped up,” he said. He also explained that many businesses such as pharmacies and retailers wanted to get out of the data center business, and that some of these companies had built data centers and operations that could no longer meet the demands of their businesses.

On a completely different matter, I’d like to call attention to a very special webinar on November 13th. Eight very special presenters have agreed to help Mission Critical hold the industry’s first electronic town hall meeting, and none of these presenters is running for office. Ask any question you want, and we will answer it. Just visit: webinars.bnpmedia.com to register. You can post a question there during the registration process or by visiting a new dedicated blog on our home page or by emailing me at heslink@bnpmedia.com.

We won’t be hiding these results either. The 7x24Exchange has agreed to give our group some time at their upcoming meeting to present findings from our event. We hope to explore ways to make this a permanent forum for airing your views.

Finally, my friends from ASCO forwarded an article detailing the potential for power shortages in 2009. They believe that potential  power shortages highlight the need for business-critical operations to ensure power reliability with on-site power generation.

I can’t say that I disagree, but the whole discussion put me in a very foul mood about how both presidential campaigns have reduced the energy discussion to oil supply and oil-related issues. Even the renewable and nuclear discussions highlight ignore our homegrown problems with reliability in favor of achieving independence from oil from foreign nations.

Excuse me?  Oil is basically a transportation fuel. Imagine the pain if we run out of electricity. Californians surely remember. Can’t we hear something meaningful about power reliability?